His second position is, that “the Greek writers who mention the Bramins, speak of them as a flourishing society, whereas the Budhists they represent as an inconsiderable handful: therefore,” etc. To the first I shall oppose Dr. Buchanan’s testimony, who states that “however idle and ridiculous the legends and notions of the worshippers of Bouddha may be, they have been in a great measure adopted by the Brahmins, _but with all their defects monstrously aggravated_.” And even had we not this rebutting evidence the inference in itself is decidedly weak; for it would go equally to establish that _Romanism_ is more recent than _Protestantism_, as containing a greater number of ceremonial observances than this latter does: whereas the reverse is what _reason_ would lead us to conclude, namely, that _ritual multiplications_ are the growth of _longevity_, and that the retrenchment of their number is what reformation aspires to. I make a free-will offering, unrestricted and unimpeded, of all the value that can belong to Grecian historians--the Greeks, whom their own countryman, Lucian, so justly banters as distinguished for nothing so much as a total indifference to truth! But admitting them to be as veracious as they were notoriously not so, the intercourse, of the very earliest of them, with India and its dependencies, was much too modern, to allow their statements to be further conclusive, than as refers to the time being: and I am very ready to allow that, at the particular moment described, the Budhists were in the wane, while the Brahmins ruled ascendant--nay, that there were but a few straggling votaries of the former creed then existing at all in that country, the latter, though schismatics from the ecclesiastical root, having, by gaining over the civil power on their side, effected their expulsion many ages before. The subterranean temples of Gyah, Ellora, Salsette, Elephanta, and those other monuments of piety and civil eminence which still shed a lustre over India, and which no subsequent state of the arts could rival, much less eclipse, owe their existence to an era anterior to this catastrophe. The Budhists were the architects when in the zenith of human power. The sculptures and devices establish this fact: for of the whole list of deities personated in those inscriptions, the Brahmins have retained none but such as suited their purpose. These, in all conscience, were numerous enough; and as the Brahmins, when at the helm, permitted not the introduction of “strange gods,” it is evident that those, which they have in common with the Budhists, are but _cullings_ from the “mother-church,” ill-understood and worse interpreted; the similarity, however, being still so great as, after a lapse of centuries, to give rise to the question of, whether the stem or the branch, the sire or the offspring, had the priority in point of time!